


Hand In Unlovable Hand

by felonazcorp



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Divorce, F/M, Horrible Coping Mechanisms, Pre-Movie, character study I guess, divorce can turn even the best people into someone they don't recognize, domestic violence of a sort, nobody is a saint here, though they're both equally at fault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 22:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11322777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felonazcorp/pseuds/felonazcorp
Summary: It’s funny how none of his colleagues seem to understand how he can remain on such friendly terms with Jocelyn as she rips his whole life to shreds.





	Hand In Unlovable Hand

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in one sitting in 2009 while listening to the Mountain Goats song "No Children", and hasn't been touched since. Two computers and three purged journals later, I found this sitting in my inbox waaaaay way back, covered in dust, and felt like digging it up and putting it out there again. 
> 
> I just have a lot of Leonard McCoy feelings, okay. 
> 
> ALSO. This ficlet has vague descriptions of a domestic, where both of them injure each other (very mildly, but still). If that sort of thing is triggering for you, please be careful as you read.

It’s funny how none of his colleagues seem to understand how he can remain on such friendly terms with Jocelyn as she rips his whole life to shreds. 

He tries to explain that they aren’t friends. He fucking hates her, she’s taking away everything he loves in life and leaving him in the dust with nothing but his medical license. That’s not friendship. 

But they were married once, and they used to be closer to each other than to anyone else in their lives, and they both fight dirty. More than anything else, they understand each other. 

He knows that when she demands he pays alimony, she’s doing it mostly as a dig to his ego. She can support herself and their daughter just fine, she’s a goddamn lawyer, it’s not like she’s hurting for cash. No, her demand for monthly payments is so that he won’t ever forget that he owes her. She was the one who carried their child, she’s the one who’s going to look after her for the rest of her life. 

No matter that he would have been perfectly happy to do that job, Jocelyn doesn’t think he’s a good enough father even when she’s around to police him, she’s not going to let him have time alone with Joanna, let alone be her primary caretaker. 

She throws his drinking in his face, cites that she’s scared to let an alcoholic with the track record he does of losing patients (and oh, isn’t that an excruciating shot, bringing up his father like that) look after a toddler. The judge sides with her, believing her utterly manufactured show of tears, his eyes flashing when she shies away from Leonard as he tries to defend himself. 

He always thought Joss should have been an actress. 

It’s funny, watching the neighbors they’ve become friends with try to pick their way through the rubble of their failed marriage, attempting to remain on good terms with them both as they fall apart. They don’t make it easy, demanding people to back them up as they stage completely inappropriate fights in public, alienating the people who still like them with a particularly self-destructive glee. 

Everyone’s amazed when they agree to meet for coffee, sitting across from each other in a tiny little booth, staring at each other over their cups. It’s like looking at a stranger, and yet it’s incredibly comforting. The quirk to her lip when she sneers at him is familiar, safe, and he knows she feels the same when he curses at her and calls her a cold-blooded bitch. 

It makes him smile in a horribly masochistic way when he sees her downtown during the day, all sleek and polished and professional-looking, her briefcase in hand as she clacks down the street in her high heels, talking up a storm on her phone. She seems like she hasn’t got a care in the world, like there’s nothing in her life that will stop her from being the youngest damn partner in her law firm as she steadily claws her way up the ranks. 

She looks good. She’s actually enjoying this, being able to flex her lawyer muscles and force him to succumb to her will. 

It’s funny, but he still loves her, even now. He loves how much joy she’s getting out of this, out of completely destroying his life. It’s ironic that she seems happier now than she ever did in their marriage. And because he loves her still, he fights her tooth and fucking nail every step of the way. He sells the horses to pay for his own lawyer (not nearly as good as Jocelyn is, but then again, hardly anyone really is), fights for his right to see Joanna as much as he wants, fights to keep the house, fights to keep his place in the practice he works at downtown. 

Unsurprisingly, he loses. Spectacularly. He would be angrier, but Jocelyn looks so pleased with herself when the judge declares that she gets everything that he finds it hard to muster up the correct amount of righteous indignation. 

Now, that isn’t to say that he isn’t furious. He is. He lets her know in no uncertain terms that he’s furious that night, when he goes home to pack up his things. They get into a spectacular fight, screaming at each other and throwing things, destroying the china dishes his grandmother got them when they got married and smashing their glasses against the walls as they hurl insults at each other. 

Her face flushes to an ugly, splotchy red as she smacks him, her nails drawing blood on his cheek, and he buries his fist in the wall in an effort to keep himself from hitting the goddamn smug expression off her face. She rips his shirt when she pushes him, he tears out a chunk of her hair. She shrieks at him, her voice rising to an unbearable pitch as she calls him the names that he’s gotten so used to over the past few weeks that they’ve become almost comforting, her fists bouncing off his chest and arms as she rants and rails, kicking at his shins and scratching his skin. 

They end up collapsed on the kitchen floor, slumped against the fridge door, shards of broken glass and china littered around them, sitting with his arms looped loosely around her waist as she leans her head on his shoulder. They’re both panting and trembling as the adrenalin fades from their system, a bottle of whiskey clutched in his hand. 

She presses her hand to his chest, over his heart, and murmurs his name. 

He strokes her hair and kisses her forehead. 

They sit there for the rest of the night, leaning against each other and sharing the bottle until the sun starts to peek through the half-destroyed blinds. Levering themselves up off the floor with stiff muscles, they start to clean up, ignoring each other as they sweep up broken dishes and re-hang pictures to hide the holes they’ve left in the walls. 

He swings by her mother’s on his way out of town, his eye swelling shut, the marks from Jocelyn’s nails scabbing over on his cheek, his shirt ripped and his breath stinking of whiskey. He says goodbye to Joanna, kisses her little forehead and tells her he loves her, promising her he won’t forget her, even if Jocelyn tries to make it easy to forget him. He ignores the look Maureen gives him, leaving without saying anything to her or Joe, even though he knows they loved him as their own son. 

He hopes that looking at what Jocelyn did to him hurts them as much as it hurts him. 

Standing by his car, he looks down the hill to where the town center stands. He can just pick out the roof of Jocelyn’s law firm, as well as the roof of the doctors’ office he used to work at. If he squints to the East, he can pretend he can see their old house, the one that’s been in his family for generations, the one that now belongs to his ex-wife. Oh, what his grandmother would say if she could see him now. 

As he drives out of town, heading to a destination he doesn’t yet know, he feels freer than he has in years.


End file.
